He’d been rough. He deserved a whipping. But how could she be so calm? When he imagined never seeing her again, he wanted to smash every stick of furniture in this room to splinters.
The anger drained from her expression and she studied him as if she saw all the way to his confused heart. Her shuddering breath wasn’t far from a sob. He was unjust to accuse her of lacking feeling.
“What else would you have me do?” Her voice was choked. “Stay in London as your mistress?”
“Yes.”
He knew it was impossible. He knew before she shook her head that she’d refuse. But he wanted her with him.
God damn it, he wanted . . . more.
“I won’t be your mistress.”
He spoke with an urgency that welled from the deepest part of him. “I’ll be faithful. I’ll treat you like a queen. I swear.”
With every word, she looked more distressed. “No . . .”
“You’ll never want for anything. I’ll give you money to set up a life afterward. You’ll be yourself at last. Tonight’s vibrant, sensual creature, not a dour duenna to other people’s children.”
“And what if we have children?”
He knew she didn’t consider his offer seriously. Still he tried. “You can have everything in writing. A house. Allowance. Carriages. Cattle. Support for offspring. My parents’ bastards prospered, entered professions.”
He’d never offered a woman so much. Never imagined he’d want to stay with a woman long enough to need such arrangements. With Antonia, his interest wasn’t the usual fleeting fancy. With Antonia, he plumbed depths he never imagined. He needed more than a few weeks to satisfy this passion.
Perhaps he’d found a woman to hold him for years.
The idea was rash, revolutionary.
His voice lowered into resonant persuasion. The irony was that for once in his misbegotten existence, the desperation was no artifice. She’d opened a new world to him. He couldn’t bear to think she slammed that door in his face and threw him back into the cold. Because with grim inevitability he recognized, without her, his existence was deathly cold.
Cold, meaningless, barren.
Her severe expression didn’t soften. “They were still bastards.”
“We haven’t been careful, my darling. You may already carry my bastard.”
At the endearment, a shadow crossed her face. He watched her reject it as only another insincere attempt to seduce.
Oh, Antonia, don’t you know that with you, these cheap words I’ve spoken a thousand times are true and not cheap at all?
“Fate couldn’t be so cruel,” she whispered, then angled her chin as if daring fate to confound her. “I will not have my name bandied across England as another of your conquests. I will not shame my family and friends by becoming a kept woman.”
“Is it better to live a lie?” His earlier anger revived. Surely after tonight, she knew what she sacrificed. “Is it better to burn? Because you will burn. You’ll yearn night after night in your lonely bed. You’ll regret this decision.”
“Perhaps.” Her gaze remained stony. He wondered where the soft, sensual creature had gone. “But not as much as I’d regret abandoning everything I believe in to become a rake’s temporary mistress.”
“You can’t expect me to let you go.” He stroked her jaw.
She stared at him with a stubborn misery that shredded his heart. “There’s nothing you can do to keep me.”
Actually she was wrong. There was something. Something so shocking, the gossips would chatter about it into the next reign.
His voice turned hoarse. His heart thundered as though he’d run a mile. He felt strangely breathless.
“You could marry me.”
Chapter Twenty-four